Fr. Antonio Santos García, a Spanish priest of the @opusdei_es who was ordered only on May 24, Maria Auxiliadora, explains that “the vocation is to let the Lord be loved.”
Santos García, one of the 20 new priests of Opus Dei ordered in Rome two weeks ago, shared with Ewtn news how he discovered that God called him to be a priest.
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“Through prayer, which is a living and personal relationship with God, one is seeing, his faith is updated … and one realizes that the Lord asks you more, that you leave what you are doing and that you totally give yourself to Him. And that is the vocation, let yourself be loved by the Lord,” said the presbyter whose First Mass was held on May 25 in the Spanish National Church of Rome.
The priest, who was previously an economist and business administrator, said that the person who accompanied him spiritually told him a while ago that “there are two important days in the life of a person: the day one is born and the day he discovers what he was born for.”
“Then, speaking with him and other people I decided to leave work on banking, the teaching of the economy and mathematics to go to Rome to study theology and also to make a discernment and see if the man was calling me to that path,” he continued.
After a few years, Santos García was ordained a deacon on November 23, 2024.
After having launched “to the pool”, the priest of Opus Dei comments that “the feeling that is felt is immense happiness, to be able to serve and help others. Being available to what the people of God need.”
“I have been a few days as a priest, but many people come to ask for help, confession, especially that they see that God is merciful, that God loves them very much, as Pope León repeats a lot,” he adds.
“God never leaves you alone”
When asked about what he tells young people that they may be considering the priestly or religious vocation, Fr. Santos encouraged them “that they trust that God never leaves you alone, that you try through prayer really see what he is asking for, that is, to see the will of God, and let you love for him and trust a lot, despite the fear.”
And to the fathers, the new presbyter encourages them to remember that “the vocation is something between their children and God, because many times, especially the mothers think that their son marries or that this other does. They trust that the Lord wants the best for his Son and that if he asks them to deliver his entire life, because they try to support him, that they do not put themselves against him.
“It is a blessing to have a son, friend or brother priest,” he concluded.
Walter Sánchez Silva
I am husband since 2008. With my wife we have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before birth. Since I joined ACI Press in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Colonia, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the family’s synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Sinodality, in 2023. I follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers the persecution of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as the ecclesial news in the region.